Ursula Schulz-Dornburgmemoryscapes - September 03 until October 09, 2004

What can be seen are a view thickly bundled, lost figures in an Arctic region, a tent, an anemometer, sleds, an airplane, a flag. One can further ascertain that these were early scientific stations, erected on drifting ice floes in the polar region. Whoever came there exposed himself for a year to cold, darkness and solitude. Observed ice, water, air, their currents, recorded everything. Also observed himself, to be sure, his own drifting through the cold heart of the planet, traversed by the line of the horizon.

At first sight the photographs show precisely this reality. Then very quickly, irritation and disappointment: here the heroic act is replicated at a reduced scale. The whole only a model. Nothing further?

Certain persons were in the Arctic, while others reconstructed this in memory of yet others. And finally the photograph of the model, which sends the viewer into transit between reality and fiction. Between which one can differentiate? In the end, everything is observation, self-observation, perception, each in its own respective context. The photograph, in which initially everything is always past, superimposes the different perspectives: a convergence of views with a system of currents entirely its own, into which consciousness drifts. Therein, everything is present. (Matthias Bärmann)

Ursula Schulz-Dornburg was born in 1938 at Berlin/Germany. She lives and works at Düsseldorf. She exhibited at many German Museums, as Kestner Gesellschaft, Hannover, as well as at many international places as Corcoran Gallery, Washington, Art Institute, Chicago and Institute Valencia d´Art Modern (IVAM).